Some small frugal wins

I’ve had a few frugal moments in the past week, and outside of my cooking efforts, it’s been a while since frugality was a post topic. So this seems like a good time to relay/brag about some recent (small) frugal victories.

And I’d love to read your latest proud frugal moments too!

The present

The first frugal moment was buying a birthday present for Pirate Party Guy. He wanted a smaller crockpot — the current one takes up the whole dishrack — and was intrigued by the ones with a timer.

He sent me an Amazon link. It was a reasonable price — $42.99 — but I knew I could do better.

I knew I had an Amazon return to make, and when you return an Amazon order to Kohl’s, the store gives you a receipt with $5 of Kohl’s cash. (It used to give a discount — 25% or 35% — but these days it seems to have settled on Kohl’s cash.)

So I did the return and:

• Went through Mr. Rebates for 2% cash back
• Used a 15% off coupon (which is applied before Kohl’s cash)
• Applied the $5 in Kohl’s cash
• Used my Chase Freedom card via PayPal, which gets me 5% cash back this quarter.

Once all the cash back finds its way to me, I’ll have paid $30 pre-tax instead of $43.

Woot!

The groceries

My fatigue has been horrible lately.

I’ve left the house maybe three times in the past nine days. Two of those times, a single errand left me exhausted. In some cases, even without leaving the house, I’d end up spending the whole evening on my bed lying as still as possible.

That’s far worse than the month when I had no stimulant in my system whatsoever — and right now I’m taking an anti-narcoleptic, which is a stimulant. Doesn’t make a dent.

I’ve done a little Googling, and it looks like my new blood pressure med is the culprit, so I’ve called my doctor. But a few days ago, it meant that I needed to do some cooking, but wasn’t sure I could even leave the house. If I did, there was no way I could even think about cooking for at least a day.

I decided to suck it up and get Fry’s delivery, since I knew there was a coupon for first-time delivery customers. I figured the $10 discount made up for the $9.95 delivery fee, so I’d just be out whatever the tip was.

Well, the Fry’s app had shown me two coupons: one for $15 off $75+ delivery or pickup orders and one for $10 off. I added both to my card, hoping the app would choose the bigger discount.

But as it happens, it applied both. So I got $25 off my order, plus a couple of coupons for the actual products purchase.

So I actually paid $1 less than I would have in-store. Which maybe doesn’t sound impressive. But that’s after the aforementioned $9.95 delivery fee and not just initially tipping (on the full amount, of course) but also adding a couple of bucks because she did a fast and stellar job.

Freed up from expending the energy to go anywhere, I was able to get a meal cooked and put away.

The cereal

Mom will be here Thursday (woot!), and there are a few things I need to get so she has something to eat.

I need to wait until the last minute to get the milk and eggs, but she also wants some cereal.

And since I was having an inexplicable hankering for Froot Loops, I went on Target’s app to look up sodium levels and discovered a $5 off $15+ grocery order for Target Circle members. (Target Circle is a free loyalty program.)

So I was able to get Mom a couple boxes of cereal and myself the Froot Loops* for $9.17 after discount. All three cereals would’ve been $4.50 to $5 each at Fry’s even with coupons.

But I also got to apply $0.16 of rewards from my last Target purchase. Bringing it down to $9.01.

Then I paid with my gift card balance — and the gift cards were purchased on Raise for about 7% off the card value.

I chose curbside delivery, so I don’t even need to change out my PJ pants to go get them. Which has nothing to do with frugality but is pretty dang nice.

*I eat them like a snack (aka dry) so it’s unlikely I’ll stick to a single serving. But as long as I don’t eat the whole box, I should be fine.

So those are my recent small frugal victories. What cool savings stories do you all have?